One of the actors who appears in a promotional video at geltfiend.com credits the company's Jewish-inspired sweaters with helping her get on a Birthright trip to Israel, despite the fact that she's not Jewish.

Another actress says uploading a photo of herself in one of the sweaters on JDate made her so popular that the site crashed in five minutes. The previous day, she adds, she had no fewer than four dates.

Other benefits of the sweaters, according to the comedic video, include helping lovers finish each other's sentences, increasing energy and strength, improving memory recall and even decreasing junk email.

The sweater line - whose name derives from the Yiddish word for money and for the chocolate Hanukkah coins - was inspired by the realization that there was no Jewish take on the horrible Christmas tradition. The Geltfiend sweaters - cardigans and pullovers for men and women priced at $60 and $65 - have scenes of snowmen wearing yarmulkes or dreidel figures on them.

Hanukkah - the eight-day celebration in which Jews mark the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem after the Maccabean revolt in the second century B.C. - starts at sundown Saturday.

Dallas native Carin Agiman, who now lives in California, launched Geltfiend in February to avoid being "doomed to spend another holiday season without anything Jewish to wear to seasonal parties," she says.

Agiman, whose Kickstarter campaign raised $20,000 to launch the business, added a photo shoot of "Santa's first Hanukkah" to the Geltfiend website. "It was really just based on my gut feeling that Santa would love Hanukkah," she says. "Chocolate, gambling, oily food - what's not to love?"

But however playful her marketing concepts are, Agiman differentiates between her product and others that focus on Christmas and only pay lip service "as more of an afterthought" to Hanukkah. "Geltfiend is about creating products that really incorporate Jewish cultural references and tie them into mainstream pop culture," she says.

The kinds of products that she describes are booming among "do it yourself" retailers, who are increasingly selling gift items, which are being marketed for both the Jewish and Christian holidays. Those new products appear to cater to a growing number of mixed-faith families.

On the website Etsy, which calls itself the "world's handmade marketplace," holiday shoppers can purchase Christmas stockings adorned with Stars of David and Hanukkah lamps (Sweet Tempered, $22) or another take on the Jewish stocking from JewishKnits for $40. And Zazzle, another e-commerce site, sells Christmas ornaments decorated with Hanukkah dreidels, the tops that children play with (Hanukkah Gifts, $22.45 each).

Gift seekers who go to the website CafePress may choose from nearly 1,000 Hanukkah-themed ornaments, including ones that say "shlemazil" (Yiddish for an unlucky person), "latke maven" and "Jewish by day, deadly ninja by night." CafePress saw a 62 percent increase in sales of Hanukkah ornaments in Texas from 2010 to 2011, spokeswoman Sarah Segal says.

Zazzle has sold its Hanukkah ornament for several consecutive years, says Diana Adair, director of communications. "Zazzle has always had a mix of creative holiday products for interfaith families," she says, noting that she is seeing an increase in products this year. "It's still the middle of the holiday season, but we anticipate the trend to continue."

Despite their prevalence in online boutiques, Hanukkah-and-Christmas gifts aren't taking off with larger retailers in Houston. Ashley Pearce, a spokeswoman for The Galleria, wasn't aware of any selling at the mall. And the gift shop at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston doesn't carry them either. "Apparently, we had items like this in the past, but they weren't selling," MFAH spokeswoman Amy Lowman says.